


She's been dying and I've been drinking

by minkhollow



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:15:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29049747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkhollow/pseuds/minkhollow
Summary: Naoki tries to put his life back together after his sister's murder.  Some things help this process more than others.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	She's been dying and I've been drinking

**Author's Note:**

> This sprang from the sheer number of game mechanics that interact with the liquor store in some capacity, and ranges throughout the main game, with the final scene making a pit stop post-Ultimax.
> 
> Pretty much everyone other than Naoki makes a very short appearance (Naoto's is easily the most substantial), but leaving the tags out didn't feel right.

Naoki’s bedroom has a good view of the street below. He’s always kind of liked it; Inaba’s quiet, sure, but it’s a good way to know what’s happening without putting a lot of effort in. It doesn’t really become a problem until the night after Saki’s funeral.

Arguably, it would’ve been a problem the morning the police came to tell them she was dead, but he’d managed to get to (very poor) sleep by that point and didn’t see the lights; he doesn’t count the night she went missing because he didn’t know what it meant at the time. The night after the funeral, though, he glances out the window and catches sight of Hanamura, of all people, loitering outside the store.

That night, he’s too tired to do anything about it, but it keeps happening, on and off. Sometimes he’s talking to the transfer student or Satonaka (or, more rarely, Amagi-san). He never tries to come in, which is just as well; they don’t exactly sell anything that’s legal for minors to buy, other than what’s in the vending machine outside. Usually he just stares at the door for hours on end, for who knows what reason.

Naoki just wants to get on with life already, but everyone around him is insisting on making that difficult. His dad left Saki’s till button on the cash register, so the whole family keeps spooking him when they hit it by accident (but Naoki was expecting that one; his grandfather’s still on the register and _he’s_ been dead for eight years now). His mom keeps crying at random. The pity customers stop buying things and start making his grief their business. He hasn’t actually tasted a meal in weeks, which is probably not normal. And Hanamura keeps rubbing salt in the wound.

To his own surprise, he makes it to July before he actually says anything. It’s warm enough to leave his window open, and the sounds of Hanamura and Seta-san (he’s not so bad, at least, even if Naoki questions his taste in friends a little) having a conversation reach him while he’s staring at his homework. Maybe it’s because the conversation’s making it harder to concentrate. Maybe it’s because he found a pack of cream puffs that expired last month in the fridge earlier. But whatever it is, it’s the last straw.

He waits until Seta-san leaves, then goes to the window. “Go _away_ , Hanamura. She’s not here.”

Hanamura about jumps out of his skin, which is a little satisfying to see, before craning his neck to look up at Naoki’s window. “That’s not why I’m here. I know she’s - I know, okay? I’m not trying to bother you guys.”

“Maybe hang out somewhere a little less obvious, then.”

Hanamura sighs, but he doesn’t argue; he just turns and leaves.

And to his credit, Naoki doesn’t see him out there again until fall term’s started.

***

Naoki’s mom encourages him to go on the school camping trip, even though things are still rough at home. (But then, things are going to stay rough at home whether he goes or not, for the foreseeable future.) He’s glad she’s at least all right with him trying to find a slice of normalcy as they all try to figure out how to keep living with this gaping hole in their lives.

It’s all of twenty minutes before he wishes he’d just stayed home.

The tent is deathly quiet before Kanji leaves - and where he thinks he’s going, Naoki has no idea - and it’s deathly quiet afterward. The three guys remaining don’t answer any of Naoki’s attempts to start a conversation. The Student Health Association has made it clear they won’t accept his help at the first aid tent if he offers it - but then, they’ve suckered the second-year transfer student into ‘filling in for a sick member’ on club days.

He’s not sick. He’s _right there_. He already has a feeling his one attempt at joining a school club this year is over before it began.

Kanji’s back for dinner, and the two of them manage something like a normal conversation, but he leaves again as soon as they’re done cleaning up. Naoki sighs; a little backup would’ve been nice, and he really can’t see why Kanji wants to risk expulsion so badly that he’s daring to exist anywhere he doesn’t belong by virtue of assigned space. In any case, he goes to bed as soon as he can, if only to avoid more awkward conversations, only to wake up a few hours later to the dulcet tones of an _extremely_ drunk Morooka haranguing everyone.

He should really tell his dad about that. Not that they can afford the drop in customers, or that it’d stop Junes from enabling Morooka, but it’d feel like he did something.

He doesn’t see Kanji again until they’re dismissed the next day; Kanji’s soaking wet and shivering, and looks vaguely like he wants to throw up.

“You all right?”

Kanji grimaces. “I really, really don’t wanna talk about it.”

So they don’t, walking back home together in silence. It’s the most normal Naoki’s felt since April.

***

The rest of the class is abuzz with the news that Risette is here, she’s transferring in, she’s _in their homeroom_. Naoki couldn’t care less about the celebrity aspect, but it would be a lie to say he’s completely uninterested.

There weren’t a whole lot of kids in the shopping district, and Rise, sometimes, was one of them. Her parents tended to drop her off with her grandmother for weeks on end and whisk her away again with as little warning as when she showed up. She was so quiet and shy back then that Naoki has a hard time reconciling that with her idol persona.

Then again, pretty much everyone who went to Marukyu looking for her, right before she was kidnapped, managed to miss her entirely, so maybe there’s something to that.

She’s cheerful enough in her introduction to the class, and takes an empty seat next to Naoki without any further comment. After lunch, he finds a note on his desk:

_I was sorry to hear about your sister. How have *you* been? Let me know if you ever want to talk - I owe it to you for including me, back in the day._

Naoki smiles. Maybe not today, but sometime, he should take her up on that.

***

An almighty crash jars Naoki out of a sound sleep.

It’s close enough that he doesn’t feel right not trying to investigate, even if it’s so chilly outside that he doesn’t want to leave the house if he doesn’t have to. He can just about see the intersection up the road, from his window; there’s a delivery truck and a police SUV wrecked in front of the closed bike shop.

If one of the cars in a crash is a police car, do you still have to call the police? He’s not sure. He opens the window to lean out and try to get a better view, but it doesn’t help much.

The sound of footsteps coming up the street diverts his attention. It’s Kanji, Souji-san and Shirogane, who already has a phone in hand. That at least answers the question of whether he has to call for help himself.

“Is everything okay?” he calls down, and immediately feels stupid for it. He should just go back to sleep.

“It’s under control,” Souji-san says. “Go back to sleep, Naoki.”

He does, and learns on Monday that things weren’t remotely okay; Rise’s exhausted all through classes, her worry plain on her face. He has a while before he has to go home for work, so he lets Souji-san rant about his uncle getting suspicious and his cousin, who was then home alone, getting kidnapped.

“She’s in the hospital. They’re both in the hospital. And I don’t know--” Souji-san cuts himself off, and takes a deep breath. “It’ll be fine. It has to be fine.”

“They’re in the best place to get help,” Naoki says. “I - I mean, I’m not very good at this stuff, but if you need to talk again I can make some time for you. Least I can do after everything.”

Souji-san nods, and thanks him, but doesn’t take him up on it again.

***

Naoki thought he was used to not being able to see anything out his window - god knows it’s foggy at night often enough that this isn’t a first - but the fog hasn’t lifted in over two weeks. It’s getting kind of old.

He wanders downstairs to see what’s going on for dinner and hears his dad, in the front of the shop, say, “We’ve already told the police everything we have to contribute.”

“I understand, Konishi-san.” Naoki pauses; what’s Shirogane doing here? “But the case has stagnated, and any detail, however inconsequential, may be of assistance.”

“We don’t _have_ any more details to offer!”

Naoki sighs, and heads out to the front before his dad insults a detective in relatively good standing. “What’s going on?”

“Ah. Good afternoon, Naoki-kun. Don’t mind me; I was simply attempting to follow up on the events of April, but I can see I’m causing an unnecessary disturbance.”

But that’s not entirely true. Naoki knows his dad wants Saki’s murder solved as much as anyone (even, yes, Hanamura), but while he’s found his own feet again, his parents are still struggling, and don’t like being reminded of what happened. Besides, his dad didn’t tell Shirogane the whole truth.

His _parents_ told the police everything they knew, but no one ever asked Naoki himself. Admittedly, he was too numb to think past ‘my sister is dead’ in the immediate aftermath, and this is the first time someone’s followed up since.

“Come upstairs,” he says. “I don’t know if I know anything useful, but it’s better than not trying.”

His dad splutters, but a customer comes in before he can protest too much. Shirogane nods and follows Naoki up to his bedroom, closing the door behind them and sitting at his desk chair. Naoki sits down on his futon.

“Thank you for this, Naoki-kun. It occurs to me that I should have asked you more questions when I first got to town in the summer.”

Naoki shrugs. “I still wasn’t… really in a state to answer at that point. It’s been a bit of a mess.”

“I quite understand. What do you know about the circumstances surrounding Saki-san’s death?”

“I don’t know why she left school early the day she found Yamano-san. If it’d been related to entrance exams, all the seniors would’ve been out, and she didn’t have work that day at either store. But she did leave early, and had the bad luck of finding a corpse. The next day a reporter ambushed her. The day after that, she came home and said some weird delivery guy talked to her, and he was really worried about her for some reason, but she’d never met him before, so she didn’t know what to make of it.”

Shirogane nods. “Anything else?”

“After dinner she got a phone call. She said it was the police station with more questions about the dead body, and someone was going to come pick her up soon. Mom and Dad argued about whether she should go, as late as it was, and Dad said it was the _police_ , and there was no point in putting them off if they needed Sis’s cooperation. So someone came and picked her up, and… that was the last we saw of her.”

“A police vehicle?”

“I saw them leave,” Naoki says, waving a hand at his currently useless window. “Around one in the morning I woke up and realised she hadn’t come home. I told my parents, but when they followed up with the police station, they said their records indicated she’d been released, and as far as they knew she came home.”

Shirogane’s eyes are wide. “I see. Thank you, Naoki-kun. You’ve been tremendously helpful.”

“I hope I have. If you find this bastard, punch them for me, will you?”

Shirogane smiles, seeming very amused by that suggestion. “I’m sure something can be arranged.”

***

He can fake it well enough for school, but the fact remains that Naoki is really not a morning person. Breaks are good for trying to balance things out, even if it makes going back to the school routine even more of a wrench. He’d been hoping to sleep in all of Golden Week, and two out of three days certainly isn’t bad, but his dad wants his help with some store stuff, so an early morning it is.

Naoki brought it on himself, suggesting the perfume line and demanding to know why they just kind of stopped brewing any of his grandfather’s recipes on-site. He’ll make it work, though, since it’s breathing some life back into the store.

And then there’s the fact that Hanamura came around last month and said he found some stuff at Junes that indicated Saki’s mysterious project was ultimately going to be asking about a local-goods section in the store, and management’s on board with it, and would the liquor store like to contribute anything? Would they _ever_. Most of the other open shops are still warming up to the idea, but the textile shop was also all-in from the word go.

As long as Kanji’s not left in charge of the signage, it’ll be fine.

He really needs caffeine, and heads out to the vending machine to get it - only to find it’s empty. He _knows_ it shouldn’t be run dry yet, even with Souji-san and his weird habit of buying the thing out every week being a possible factor. “How the hell--”

And then he sees there’s money sitting in the dispenser slot. A lot of money.

Make that _what_ the hell. At least whoever bought them out overnight was ( _very_ ) generous, but Naoki’s just more confused now.

Fortunately Souzai Daigaku’s vending machine isn’t bought out, so he can still fuel his early morning, and hopefully figure out this mystery later.


End file.
